The Milwaukee Bucks continue to rank among the most pleasant surprises of the NBA season, comfortably dispatching the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night to move back above .500 at 19-18, four more wins than they managed all of last season. But while Milwaukee has ridden a meat-grinder defense (the young Bucks have allowed just 99.8 points per 100 possessions, fourth-best in the NBA), the offensive punch of point guard Brandon Knight (a team-high 18.2 points per game on 45/40/89 shooting splits) and becoming-more-regular bursts of inspiration from skyhook-dunking wunderkind Giannis Antetokounmpo to find themselves just a half-game behind the Cleveland Cavaliers for the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference, they're a bit thin on the frontline, thanks to the season-ending injuries to No. 2 overall pick Jabari Parker and second-round pick Damien Inglis, the ongoing absence of rim-protector Larry Sanders and the need to bring Ersan Ilyasova along slowly as he recovers from a concussion.
Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Marc J. Spears reported Dec. 30 that Bucks head coach Jason Kidd was looking former teammate Kenyon Martin to add some veteran heft up front, and according to ESPN.com's Marc Stein, that's exactly what they've decided to do, adding the ex-New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers and New York Knicks bruiser on a 10-day deal:
The move will reunite Martin with Bucks first-year coach Jason Kidd after they teamed up together in New Jersey -- with both on the floor -- to lead the Nets to consecutive trips to the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. [...]
The former No. 1 overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft has averaged 12.5 points and 6.9 rebounds in 14 seasons. He auditioned for the Bucks last week and is expected to help them try to fill the frontcourt void left by the ongoing absence of center Larry Sanders, who has returned to the team this week but says he is working on his "psyche and my physical health" after unspecified personal issues recently.
Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal-Times and Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski report that the Bucks, who entered Thursday with a full complement of 15 players on their roster, are expected to waive point guard Nate Wolters to make room for the 37-year-old Martin.
Milwaukee selected Wolters with the 38th overall pick in the 2013 NBA draft, and the South Dakota State product wound up playing a larger-than-expected role as a rookie due to myriad injuries in the Bucks' backcourt. While his numbers weren't exactly eye-popping — 7.2 points, 3.2 assists and 2.6 rebounds in 22.6 minutes per game over 58 appearances, including 31 starts — he offered a surprisingly steady hand at the point. Milwaukee was outscored by a total of 28 points in Wolters' 1,310 minutes of floor time last season, and by a staggering 643 points in the 2,666 minutes the 6-foot-4 guard didn't play.
He hasn't been able to crack Kidd's rotation this season, though, finding himself parked on the bench behind Knight and veteran offseason additions Jerryd Bayless and Kendall Marshall. Add in the fact that Wolters' rookie minimum deal is unguaranteed for next season, and parting ways with him seems like the most painless adjustment for the Bucks both on and off-the-court.
There's some concern among Bucks fans — captured nicely here and here by Frank Madden of Brew Hoop, and here by Bucksketball's Jeremy Schmidt — that jettisoning a young player like Wolters to sign an older player like Martin to, in all likelihood, take minutes away from young players like John Henson and recent pressed-into-starting-service rookie Johnny O'Bryant III represents a somewhat disappointing shift in tone for a Bucks team that entered the season expected to do little more than continue the slow advancement of their youth-will-be-served rebuild, but that has taken significantly larger-than-anticipated steps under Kidd's watch while also benefitting from the dismal state of the bottom of the East. That's especially true because Martin, during his last stint with the Knicks, wasn't exactly an impact player, grabbing his customarily below-average-for-a-power-forward share of available rebounds, turning the ball over a bunch, and generally existing to either loudly and proudly finish an alley-oop dunk or loudly commit a hard foul, then proudly raise his hand to take credit for it.
Either way, Kenyon's going to be loud and proud as he goes about being maybe only kind-of-sort-of helpful for less than half the game (provided, of course, he staves off injury long enough to stay on the court). Is taking a 10-day flier that he's got more in the tank than that worth sacrificing an inexpensive young point guard who's shown he can play a little bit? If he can approximate the defensive impact he made after joining the Knicks during the 2012-13 season, when Mike Woodson's squad allowed 3.2 fewer points per 100 possessions in Martin's minutes than without him on the court, while providing a bit of edge for a young team composed largely of players about to face the crucible of a playoff push for the first time, then maybe it is. If Martin's as creaky as he looked last year, though, the Bucks might've been better off continuing to lean on O'Bryant, Henson and stout veteran Zaza Pachulia at the five while Sanders is out, giving longer looks to Antetokounmpo and the somewhat resurgent Jared Dudley as small-ball fours until Ilyasova gets back, and hanging onto an intriguing young asset (even one not being deployed at the moment) rather than cashing it in for a likely negligible short-term gain.
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